New map engine questions

[kyle0440]

With the new map engine to replace Google Maps in the newest preview version, I have a couple of questions:

- Can an option be added to have a "Hybrid" style map (something like ESRI imagery but with labels too?)

- Any chance aircraft marker icon/text colors on the map could be customized? Not a fan of how the new soft grey shadow looks, and I'd like the option to adjust both that and the aircraft icons/text.

- Will users need to clear cache/cookies for new initial settings that work with the new map engine to take affect, or will the new initial settings automatically override anything users have set when they're changed on the server side?

[agw]

- Can an option be added to have a "Hybrid" style map (something like ESRI imagery but with labels too?)

If you can find a free tile server that has imagery and labels then let me know and I'll add it.

- Any chance aircraft marker icon/text colors on the map could be customized? Not a fan of how the new soft grey shadow looks, and I'd like the option to adjust both that and the aircraft icons/text.

The aircraft markers haven't changed. If you've been using version 3 previews for a while then you might have gotten used to the SVG markers which have a stronger shadow than the old 2.4 bitmap markers.

If you're talking about the slight dimming of the tiles then that's not set in stone. I needed to dim most of the tile servers a bit to get some contrast for the aircraft trails. I did that by telling Leaflet to add a CSS class called vrs-brightness-70 to the tiles, and then in the CSS for that class I just added a filter to set the brightness to 70%. I also added a set of sibling brightness CSS classes ranging from -10 to -150.

One thing I was thinking of was maybe having something in the server options that let you specify the brightness setting you wanted to use and have that override the setting that's downloaded from the server. I figured that could come later though, it wasn't important to have it in at the beginning.

- Will users need to clear cache/cookies for new initial settings that work with the new map engine to take affect, or will the new initial settings automatically override anything users have set when they're changed on the server side?

I was in two minds about whether to store Google and Leaflet map settings in separate sections at the browser. At the moment they're separate but now I'm thinking that they should share settings. It might mean that the zoom gets a little messed up if you switch between Google Maps and Leaflet but I think that would be the only downside, whereas the downside of keeping them separate is that everyone will get their maps moved back to West London.

[kyle0440]

They seem to load the imagery basemap with labels in this example: http://esri.github.io/esri-leaflet/exam ... emaps.html

Not sure if that's helpful or not.

Hmm... Guess I was. I wasn't paying much attention to the version numbers, just grabbing the most recent release from the preview page. Looks like I'm missing ident active now too, so probably... When the new maps get added to that guess I'll switch back.

[agw]

I've just uploaded another preview. This one backports a few fixes from V3 and it changes things so that Leaflet and Google share the same setting section. If you move the map centre in one and then switch to the other provider then you won't have to move the map centre again.

Looking at the JavaScript on that page it seems that they're adding the labels as a separate layer. There's no support for that at the moment, labels only work if they're a part of the tile layer. There's no reason why that can't be added later but it won't be in there for 2.4.1.